Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at the Capitol in Washington in November. J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has opposed a greater percentage of President Biden’s nominees for federal judicial positions than she did nominees brought forward by any of the four previous presidents.
Collins voted last week against confirming Maine-born and New York-based lawyer Natasha Merle to federal trial court in Brooklyn. It was the 18th time Collins has voted no on a Biden nominee. During George W. Bush’s two terms as president, by comparison, Collins voted no on just two nominees.
Merle, a 40-year-old civil rights lawyer who has worked for the NAACP’s legal defense and education fund for almost eight years, secured a seat on the bench of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York anyway. Despite opposition from all Republican members and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Vice President Kamala Harris broke a tie and the Senate confirmed Merle in a 50-49 vote Wednesday.
During the 25-plus years that Collins has been a member of the Senate, she has voted to confirm 94% of more than 700 nominees to the federal district and circuit courts.
Her approval rate of nominees was 96% during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, during which she voted to confirm 633 of 660 nominees, according to an analysis by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.
But during Biden’s tenure, her rate of opposition has risen. So far in his presidency, she has voted yes in roll call votes 86% of the time, opposing the confirmation of 18 out of 132 nominees.
“That is still a very high percentage of confirmations, and I’ve voted to confirm more Biden judges than any other Republican,” Collins said Friday when asked about her increased opposition to judicial nominees. There is no national tracking system to compare senators’ voting patterns on judicial confirmations.
Collins said she chooses judges based on experience and ability to be impartial, and that the slight increase in opposition to nominees is largely because of a significant change in the way judges are voted on – which has resulted in presidents from both parties putting forward judges with more extreme ideological views.
Screening nominees to the federal court system is an important, if often overlooked, role of the Senate. Judges confirmed to federal court make decisions on cases that directly impact the lives of citizens.
“A single lower court judge can interrupt or change many lives,” said Zack Ford, senior manager of press and editorial communications at the Alliance for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based progressive nonprofit working to ensure the federal judiciary is diverse and protects civil, human and constitutional rights.
In recent years, federal judges have often been confirmed along party lines. But Collins maintains that she has supported nominees based on their qualifications and continues to do so. Her high rate of yes votes through five presidencies largely backs that up.
“I don’t base my votes on whether it is a Democratic president’s nominee or a Republican president’s nominee,” Collins said.
Instead, she said, she looks at their experience and American Bar Association rating and watches their confirmation hearings. “That approach has not changed,” she said.
Asked why her rate of approval for federal judges has dipped under Biden, Collins pointed to a change 10 years ago in the way federal judges are confirmed. For the first part of Collins’ tenure, judicial nominees had to win 60% of votes. But in 2013, Democrats changed the law so that judicial nominees must secure only a simple majority. Democrats at the time were frustrated with a Republican blockade of then-President Obama’s judicial nominees.
The 60% threshold encouraged presidents to opt for more middle-of-the-road candidates likely to appeal to senators of both parties, experts say. But requiring only a simple majority has allowed presidents from both parties to nominate people to the judiciary who lean further in one ideological direction or the other.
Collins said this is one of the reasons she has voted against more judges, although her approval rate for judicial nominees remained above 90% during the Obama administration, which ended in 2017, and the Trump presidency, which ended in 2021.
Collins said judges who have expressed what she sees as extreme ideological views raise concerns for her.
“We have to have judges who will adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution and do so regardless of what their personal views may be,” she said. “That is why when I see a judicial nominee who has made extreme comments, it raises a red flag.”
Collins has applied this standard to nominees on both sides of the ideological spectrum, she said.
Merle, who won confirmation last week, is a prominent civil rights lawyer who has handled death row appeals, spearheaded lawsuits against the Trump administration and argued before the Supreme Court. She faced criticism from Republicans over remarks she made on a podcast in 2017 when she said it was inconsistent for politicians to denounce white supremacy while supporting policies such as voter identification requirements.
Collins said she voted against Merle because of comments equating support for Trump’s wall along the southern border and voter identification laws with white supremacy. The comments made Collins question whether Merle would be able to put aside her personal views in making judgments, she said. She voted against Trump appointee William Pryor for similar reasons, she said, based on writings of his that she saw as denigrating to women and hostile to gay people.
Collins’ vote followed criticism by her party’s leader in the Senate.
“Natasha Merle is an activist attorney with a penchant for staking out extreme and inflammatory positions that are thoroughly divorced from reality,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said on the floor Tuesday.
However, Democrats lauded Merle as a successful and experienced lawyer who fights for civil rights and is committed to upholding the rule of law.
New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called her a “deeply experienced litigator” ahead of the vote and said she would bring a “crucial and unique perspective” to the federal bench. She highlighted support in the legal community and Merle’s experience, which includes clerkships in federal court and a stint as a public defender.
Merle was born in Brunswick, but it is unclear how long she lived in Maine. She grew up in New York and does not appear to have family connections in Maine today. The Press Herald was unable to contact her.
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